Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing technique used to improve the ranking of a website or blog in search engine results pages (SERPs). Some SEO techniques are simple enough for site owners to do themselves, without hiring an outside SEO firm or consultant. There are some common mistakes that many site owners make when applying SEO to their particular sites.
Most site owners use keywords, words or phrases that a user is likely to type into a search engine to get to a website, to rank highly on SERPs. They tend to use these keywords too often, compromising the content and readability of the site. Overstuffing an article with keywords may temporarily raise the SERP rank, but the article will seem boring to the reader and the article will lose its high ranking. Search engines are able to recognize quality content; some even use human editors to check content rather than crawlers or bots. These editors are able to pick out which keywords are relevant and which are not; therefore overuse of keywords and phrasing is not necessary.
Another common mistake is exchanging links and creating a website solely for the purpose of placing links from the site which the SEO is intended. In other words, creating a bogus website just to link to your actual website in an unethical SEO practice, and will likely be discovered by the search engine. Exchanging links is a suitable practice only when two parties agree and the links are related to the subject or product. If three or more parties are involved in link exchanging, this will raise a red flag and likely cause the search engine to monitor where each and every link comes from and be assured that the links are legitimate. Bev Gray, a small business owner who recently dabbled in SEO, found out the hard way that, “A website overloaded with outbound links to other sites is another ineffective SEO technique; this is known as a link farm and can result in your site being penalized by search engines.”
The goal of SEO is to fairly rank websites and blogs on SERPs. There are ways this can be achieved without hiring an SEO firm; but if you choose to do your own SEO, make sure you do it fairly and ethically. The most effective way to maintain a high ranking in search engines is to provide quality content with usable information that search engines consider valuable. A well-written, unique website will make other site owners want to link their site to yours, thus increasing you SERP ranking.
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